Events: 12 – 19 August
Some dates for your diary of woman-centric events going on around the UK this week.
Workshops:
14 August: Choicework: Pro Choice Embroidery Workshop and Discussion – Feminist Library, 5 Westminster Bridge Rd, London, SE1 7XW at 7pm.
Choicework is a participatory patchwork piece celebrating and increasing awareness of the worldwide growing pro-choice movement. In this series of workshops held at the Feminist Library, you can learn new craft skills whilst participating in the project and engaging in conversations around reproductive rights and issues.
Free Entry
Walks:
16 August: Sheffield Walk for Women at Wortley Hall, Sheffield, at 5.45pm.
A 1-hour walk to celebrate 100 years since 50,000 women marched for the right to vote. Wear sashes and rosettes!
Talks:
16 August: The 2013 Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Lecture at Wortley Hall, Sheffield, at 7.00pm.
Women and the 1913 Dublin Lockout British solidarity: Sylvia’s part, including her visit to Ireland in 1914
A talk given by Theresa Moriarty, an independent researcher on Irish women workers’ history, member of the Irish History Society.
Art:
Until 26 August: Leaps Jumps and Bumps at the Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA from 10am-6pm.
The first solo exhibition of the work of Elaine Sturtevant to be held in a public institution in the UK. Sturtevant has made ground-breaking and enigmatic work since her first exhibitions in New York in the mid-1960s. In the last two decades, Sturtevant has evolved a highly structured and rigorous exploration of current events, using multi-screen video works and installations.
Admission free: £1 donation appreciated.
Until 8 September: Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London, SW1Y.
‘Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper)’ explores how artists from the 1940s to the present day have used drawing to address ideas critical and current to their time, ranging from the politics of gender and sexuality to feminist issues, war and censorship.
The exhibition brings together the work of eight artists: Judith Bernstein, Tom of Finland, George Grosz, Margaret Harrison, Mike Kuchar, Cary Kwok, Antonio Lopez and Marlene McCarty.
Exhibitions:
Until 3 November: Women in the Workhouse at The Workhouse, Upton Road, Southwell, Nottinghamshire NG25 0PT.
Drawing on oral history archives, the exhibition focuses on the involvement of women in workhouses in a range of areas, through testimonies including those of a former Matron, nurse, seamstress, hairdresser, cook and inmate, all of which help to provide an insight into the changing nature of workhouse life.
Artefacts, correspondence and photographs provide further insight into the often harsh reality of women’s lives during a period of great social change. Women also played an important role in bringing about change within the workhouse system through their involvement as social reformers and Guardians.
The exhibition is brought up to date with current staff reflecting on their roles on what The Workhouse means to them.
See website for admission prices.
Film:
‘Wadjda’: This landmark film was written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. It was shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and is the first feature-length movie made by a female Saudi director. The plot revolves around a young girl’s resolute determination to become the owner of a beautiful green bicycle – an item which society, and her own mother, perceives as dangerous to her virtue.
Screenings around the country, include
12-14 August: Newcastle upon Tyne
12-15 August: Sheffield
20 August: Aberdeen
Music:
7 – 14 August: Women in Tune Music Festival near Lampeter, SA48 8ND.
This is your opportunity to socialise and do your own thing, whether it is music making, craft making, sharing your skills, walking, communing with nature, relaxing, exploring the area – doing all the things you never get time to do.
Even though this year’s festival is described as an Idle Women in Tune Musical Festival, with organisation and other work being kept to a bare minimum – there will be no crew or performers. Women are encouraged to share skills and entertainment and other fun. There will, however, be the usual ‘Giveaway Corner’, which provides the opportunity to declutter and pass on your unwanted stuff!
Tickets for the festival are £35; for the low/unwaged and £50 full price.
Until 7 September: Marin Alsop conducts at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AP.
On 15 August:
Edu Lobo – Pé de Vento from Suíte Popular Brasileira, orch. Nelson Ayres;
Antonín Dvořák – Symphony No. 9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’, Op 95;
Joan Tower – Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman;
Alberto Ginastera – Estancia, Op 8a – suite;
Hector Villa-Lobos – Momoprécoce; Aaron Copland – Fanfare for the Common Man
On 17 August:
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Choir of the Enlightenment in a rare performance of Brahms’s ‘A German Requiem’ on period instruments. Brahms’s ‘Tragic Overture’ and Schumann’s Fourth Symphony complete a powerful programme of mourning and consolation.
On 7 September:
Alsop will be the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms.
Theatre:
Part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Until 13 August: Vinegar Tom at C venues – C nova, India Buildings, Victoria Street, Edinburgh, from 7.10pm.
‘I’m not a witch. But I wish I was’. In 17th-century England, the signs of witchcraft blight the land. Cattle are dying, butter won’t churn and the infidelities of men cause their privates to wither. Who’s to blame? The women of course – the young unmarried mother, the beggar woman, the wise crone, the women that no man loves nor wants. Expect black comedy and Brecht set to a soundtrack of funk and punk as Warwick University Drama Society revives Caryl Churchill’s classic feminist play for the new millennium.
Until 25 August: Crying Out Loud presents La Poème at 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, from 7.45pm.
Joyously strange, with great femininity and bestiality. An intense play where Jeanne Mordoj – a ventriloquist, juggler and contortionist – delves deeper into her reflections on femininity. Exploring both the infinitely gracious and the monstrous, each potentially present within the other. Jeanne Mordoj is a stubborn feminist. Not a fury in battle, but mischievous and unshakable.
Until 26 August: Nirbhaya at the Assembly Hall, Mound Place, Edinburgh, from 4-5.30pm.
The play tells the story of medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey, who was savagely raped and killed on a bus in Delhi last year, with interweaving real testimony about sexual violence from Indian actresses. “One of the most powerful pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen”, according to a five-star review by The Telegraph‘s critic, Laura Barnett. The Stage judged it to be “one of those wonderfully compelling, if hard to watch, shows that could well turn into a force for change”.
Tickets £14.